A forum for the print and digital publishing industries

The Media Minute 10.09.2018

It’s not very often that Google updates its Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines (for example, it has only done so once this year) and when it does, it provides us with a peek behind the scenes of what the company is emphasizing on—to its team of over 10,000 content quality raters—in terms of search guidelines.

Unilad, one of the biggest publishers on Facebook, has gone into administration, putting hundreds of jobs at risk and casting doubt on whether outlets that rely on the social media platform for distribution can become sustainable businesses.

The Chicago-based company, which also owns the Baltimore Sun; Hartford Courant; Orlando Sentinel; South Florida’s Sun Sentinel; the New York Daily News; the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Md.; The Morning Call in Allentown, Pa.; the Daily Press in Newport News, Va.; and The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Va., announced the decision Thursday. It ends a more than two-year run with the much-derided corporate moniker of Tronc.

Can a publisher survive without Facebook? Danish publisher TV Midtvest decided to find out. With Facebook changing its algorithm to deprioritize news, the publisher initiated a bold experiment: to go off Facebook completely and find out what happens.